Posted
by
EditorDavid
on Sunday January 21, 2018 @07:34PM
from the blaming-the-Messenger dept.

An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch:
Facebook has said it will conduct a wider investigation into whether there was Russian meddling on its platform relating to the 2016 Brexit referendum vote in the UK. Wednesday its UK policy director Simon Milner wrote to a parliamentary committee that's been conducting a wide-ranging enquiry into fake news -- and whose chair has been witheringly critical of Facebook and Twitter for failing to co-operate with requests for information and assistance on the topic of Brexit and Russia -- saying it will widen its investigation, per the committee's request. Though he gave no firm deadline for delivering a fresh report -- beyond estimating "a number of weeks".

It's not clear whether Twitter will also bow to pressure to conduct a more thorough investigation of Brexit-related disinformation. At the time of writing the company had not responded to our questions either. At the end of last year committee chair Damian Collins warned both companies they could face sanctions for failing to co-operate with the committee's enquiry -- slamming Twitter's investigations to date as "completely inadequate", and expressing disbelief that both companies had essentially ignored the committee's requests... Independent academic studies have suggested there was in fact significant tweet-based activity generated around Brexit by Russian bots."
Theresa May has said Russia's attempts to "sow discord" in the West could not go unchallenged, and warned Vladimir Putin, "We know what you are up to."

Facebook's response complained that a new investigation "requires detailed analysis of historic data by our security experts, who are also engaged in preventing live threats to our service."

I wonder if Russia is behind Facebook's reopening of this probe into Russian meddling in Brexit. If you're Russia it seems like the best way to stir up shit in opposing powers is to let them tear themselves in half over whether or not Russia was involved in influencing their government in some way.

I wonder if Russia is behind alvinrod's commenting that Russia is behind Facebook's reopening of this probe into Russian meddling in Brexit. If you're Russia it seems like the best way to stir up shit in opposing powers is to let alvirond start some whataboutisms over whether or not Russia was involved in influencing Facebook reopining this probe into Russian meddling in Brexit.

I only wish I were getting paid for half of the shit I think up sometimes. The simple truth is that Russia probably doesn't even need to go to those lengths when the monsters are due on maple street [vimeo.com].

I think we're already stuck in the kind of mental rut that the country was in after the September 11 attacks that resulted in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I doubt the consequences of this will be anywhere near as severe, but this is something that's clearly gained a life of its own. There may well be a k

I can tell you the view from ground zero, the people who voted for Brexit are not even able to use Facebook. They rely on the talk at the pub, and there they had the Romanians and Bulgarians to blame (highly visible as construction workers). Later the Bulgarian politicians started to make noise so only the Romanians were blamed.

Brexit is nothing more than the voice of racism and for that there is not need for Russia or Farcebook to stir it.

Perhaps if the country had been able to properly debate the impacts of immigration and bring it under control without being accused of racism then people wouldn't have felt disenfranchised and used their one opportunity to vote against a status quo that didn't recognise or represent their interests.

My slashdot history is full of posts asking for Donald Trump to be shot into the sun. I'm not a sockpuppet, I just hate losers who continue to use failed strategies, especially when those strategies get in the way of actual left wing policies being passed. Get rid of the Clintonites and replace them with actual progressives, and Trump and his ilk don't stand a chance.

I'm curious, what/when was the last 'experience' (do you mean experiment?)?

most successful nation

Not by a lot of metrics; less so than in the past and falling.

Some progressive policies =/= socialism. Some well-regulated and limited social policies =/= socialism. Criticism of the excesses of capitalism =/= socialism. Calling for limitations or regulation of capitalism =/= socialism.

Neither pure capitalism, nor pure socialism (or the closest approximations that have arisen) work particularly well for anyone but the small group who come to accumulate power. Identifying the areas of society that are best allowed to operate as a (regulated) free market, and those areas that are better run as (limited and well defined) social services is more successful, by a number of measures.

Challenging where to draw those lines is essential to prevent the excesses of an imbalance in either direction, and to that end debate and argument is useful.

Tribalism, partisanship or a refusal to accept any 'dilution' of a position, or compromise with different points of view is not.

Neither pure capitalism, nor pure socialism (or the closest approximations that have arisen) work particularly well for anyone but the small group who come to accumulate power. Identifying the areas of society that are best allowed to operate as a (regulated) free market, and those areas that are better run as (limited and well defined) social services is more successful, by a number of measures.

This. Almost all nations run mixed economies because they work.
It should be noted that a pure socialism (communism) has been tried and failed... However a pure capitalism hasn't even gotten off the ground, each and every time it's failed before even starting. Both extremes fail for the same reason, they requires every single person to think in exactly the same way and believe in exactly the same things.

I wonder if Russia is behind Facebook's reopening of this probe into Russian meddling in Brexit. If you're Russia it seems like the best way to stir up shit in opposing powers is to let them tear themselves in half over whether or not Russia was involved in influencing their government in some way.

Russia uses online propaganda to meddle. If their decision to reopen the probe into Russian meddling in Brexit was based on online propaganda then they are more gullible than Trump voters.

It seems extremely unlikely that Russia is going to draw unwanted attention to itself. The best course of action is for all parties to remain calm and wait for the outcome of the investigation. Now, if you doubt Facebook's own investigation then you are effectively claiming that Facebook is currently meddling in Brexit

The ability to blame Russia keeps the Democratic party from fixing it's internal corruption and winning elections. Russiagate has already made the entire American news system shit the bed over basic journalistic integrity and understanding which direction time moves in.

I see a lot of anonymous coward postings taking a "nothing to see here.. move along" stance...
So sorry that Facebook looking into and possibly exposing something ruffles your delicate feathers so much...

The problem is something called sampling bias [wikipedia.org]. If you only look for meddling by Russia in only decisions you dislike, then you can only find meddling by Russia only in decisions you dislike. e.g. If your landlord claims your apartment is filthy and is the source of the cockroaches that everyone in the building has been complaining about, and he does an extensive search for roaches in your apartment and finds some, that doesn't prove his claim. For all we know, your apartment could be the cleanest one in the building, and if he'd done the same extensive search on the other apartments he would've found a lot more roaches. But by searching only your unit, he's abusing sampling bias - cherry picking data by only looking in certain places - to try to make it appear as if you're the one at fault.*

If you want to investigate something like this in an objective manner, you need to look for meddling into all big political decisions by all foreign powers. This includes meddling by Facebook (a US corporation) abusing sampling bias to try to discredit the UK Brexit vote via a press release that millions if not tens of millions of Britons will hear about in the news..

* In this case the statistical error (by Facebook) is intentional. But sampling bias can creep in unintentionally too. The classic example is a surveyor tasked with finding out how many hours city residents ride the subway on average, so the city can make better decisions on if subway service should be expanded. He starts off by asking random people on the street how often they ride the subway each week. He grows frustrated that most people don't ride the subway at all, making it difficult for him to gather the required minimum number of positive responses to minimize the margin of error. Then he's struck with inspiration. He'll simply got aboard a subway train and ask the riders how many hours they ride each week. Since everyone on the subway must be subway riders, that'll neatly filter out all the non-riders he's been wasting his time with.

The problem is when you ask people riding on the subway instead of random people on the street, the odds of you encountering a heavy subway user are higher. e.g. If 80% of subway riders ride the subway 1 hour a week, and 20% ride it 10 hours a week, you are 2.5x as likely to sample a 10 hr/wk rider than you are a 1 hr/wk rider simply because they're on the subway a lot longer. So the statistical data you gather this way ends up biased high by your sampling method.

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, it makes perfect sense to scrutinise tactics more closely if they actually worked. If Russians had hypothetically meddled to try to get a "yes" in the Scottish independence vote, that wouldn't be as big a deal because it didn't work.

No, no, not at all. Russia is just the only foreign actor that we have some evidence for. It's very possible that others are trying with varying levels of success and varying levels of having been caught.

This is not sampling bias. It's answering a question that is less general than the question you're asking. To wit, did Russia influence the Brexit election to a large degree? Totally different questions are "Did Russia influence other elections" and "Did France influence the Brexit vote".

There is also outliers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] in association with very large numbers of samples. Start with big enough numbers and the tiniest percentage becomes a large number. So start with a trillion posts and how many posts, fit in any claim will end up being a large number, in the hundreds of thousands but as a percentage it is pretty much invisible, an outlier to be ignored. Now create that large number outlier, like say 10,000 people with shared interests, make one post per day, which is n

When the Times of London reported that researchers who were working on an another study
had identified 156,252 Twitter accounts with Russian as their language,
had posted messages in English to argue against the European Union
during the Brexit referendum, was that sampling bias?
This is international politics not statistics or science with complex cases of cause and effect.

The thing is, I suspect most people that voted to leave the EU don't follow Russian twitter accounts. I voted to leave and I follow no twitter accounts.

Meanwhile there were a large number of British politicians and other public figures speaking very eloquently (and/or talking out of their arse) about leaving the EU. The vote to leave happened because a large number of British people were genuinely unhappy with the state of the country and didn't need Russia or anybody else to tell them that something needed

If you only look for meddling by Russia in only decisions you dislike, then you can only find meddling by Russia only in decisions you dislike

We know that a lot of fake Russian accounts were just sowing discord, not targeting particular issues. In the US they have pretended to be BLM and AntiFa on one hand, and neo Nazis and Trump supporters on the other. They understand that a heavily polarized and divided country full of misinformation tends to break our fragile democracies, which are basically winner takes all.

A lot of the fake UK accounts were just spouting xenophobic rubbish to stir up anger. A smaller number advocated for Brexit directly, usually pretending to be people from outside London in order to push the "out-of-touch political elite" narrative.

People all over the UK voted to exit the EU.
"Russians" did not drive out of the embassy and "vote" a lot all over the UK to sway the result.
Real citizens all over the UK wanted out of the EU and the vote results reflected that.

Any reasonable person would be concerned about evidence of destabalising posting on open western media. You forget that it is a primary attack method of the Russian military and that their internet is tightly controlled. The evidence is likely to show external posts of strongly emotional appeals to both sides of any political dispute in order to break down the cohesiveness of our society.

Given many posts here they are doing a great job. We used to be largely content with voting to determine our politics and today there are many souces openly calling for civil war. Anywhere that there has actually been a civil war recently has a destroyed economy so I would not dismiss this method of attack quite so glibly.

It would be a lot more believable if there were any signs of using EFFECTIVE methods of countering Russian propaganda. A commonly stated goal of Russia is to undermine faith in western democracies. Instead of changing policies to restore faith, they are using Russia to avoid actually implementing populist agendas.

The only effective response is to draw attention to it. If people get notifications from Facebook saying "this post you liked and re-posted to all your friends was actually Russian propaganda" it might alter their behaviour and views on the subject. It might make them think twice next time.

The Russian propaganda is "Your politicians don't listen to you and your democracy is a farce." That line is a lot harder to sell if you are politicians DO listen to you, and your democracy ISN'T a farce.

For example, had the Democratic nominee been Bernie Sanders, the emails showing the corruption of the DNC would HELP him, not hurt him, because it would paint him as an underdog fighting against corruption. THAT would be an effective countermeasure.

When the Russians actually fund Communist and Green parties and generally support left-wing agitation, there's nothing to see here. But when people vote right-of-center, it must be a Russian conspiracy!

#blacklivesmatter is responsible for a dozen or more police officer deaths. There's also no shortage of key leadership figures who've posted long anti-white screeds or what the progressive left would like to call "hate speech." And there is next to zero outcry over that, or even next to zero outcry in the media over it. The only one that got any real media play was the #blm leader in Toronto because it came very close to actually hitting the level for incitement in Canada.

And here's the actual report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the above article is based on, in case you'd like to see it:

Uh, you might want to actually read that GAO report. Unlike the paste eaters over at paste magazine, who also missed what it said. When you remove the "anti-government extremists" which aren't actually just right-wing. And in those cases, once you actually read them you find out that the vast majority of them weren't right wing either. Yo find out that the GAO report still has muslims killing more people in the US even if you leave those "anti-government extremists" in there. Let's not forget those lovel

When you remove the "anti-government extremists" which aren't actually just right-wing. And in those cases, once you actually read them you find out that the vast majority of them weren't right wing either.

You're lying.

What you're trying to say is, "Once you remove all the right-wing extremists from the study of who killed cops, you will find that no right-wing extremists killed cops. You're really being dishonest.

Actual court cases prove otherwise. Then again, I see you haven't read the gao report yet.

What you're trying to say is, "Once you remove all the right-wing extremists from the study of who killed cops, you will find that no right-wing extremists killed cops. You're really being dishonest.

No. I'm saying that mislabeling for the sake of mislabeling does nobody any good. So why don't you go read up on those cases, and you'll suddenly find out that a good half of them aren't actually "white nationalists." But if you want to really play that game, then we shall take a look at black on white crime, which suddenly becomes "black nationalists killing whites" especially when the reasoning in the person as t

Oh by the way, I'm sure you also believe the story out of Canada where the muslim girl claimed someone "cut her hijab" and were salivating all over it as proof that those "evil right wingers" were out there. I'll also bet you didn't watch the press conference, let me give you a hint. Pay attention to her mothers eyes, always down and left, look, down and left. That's a known sign of remembering a fabrication. Oh, and of course, we can't forget that it didn't actually happen [nationalpost.com]...but it sure didn't stop the

I've heard plenty of people disparaging Black Lives Matter. It certainly didn't begin with post #55975607 on Slashdot, and I'm certain I've seen it in the mainstream press on TV.

Like any huge social movement, there's always going to be elements who take a more militant/hardline stance. The most relevant historical parallel would be the Black Panthers' activities during the civil rights movement in the 60s. Or more recently, the people ran down by Nazis in Charleston. Which is not to say "All sides. All

but it was Mays own party that proposed Brexit on a gamble. After the country actually voted in favour of it, 3 separate politicians assumed responsibility for the fiasco and each stepped aside as the brakes were nowhere to be found on this train. Even Boris Johnson had a swing at the corpulent trashbag known as Brexit. the UK even went so far as to say the legislation was somehow nonbinding, and when pressed by the EU to exist in a timely fashion had the audacity to demand "a good deal" in exchange for leaving. They did not in fact get a deal.

now may's trying again, desparately, to save face and pin the blame on russia? Seriously? At some point someone has to call her bluff and ask what strategic or tactical advantage Russia gains by sabotaging a nation into exile from a trade group russia already has formal relations with (the EU)? In other words, why would russia intentionally make it more cumbersome to trade with the UK?

In May's case: NOT trying to gain political power by having a Brexit referendum that you didn't actually want to pass.
In Clinton's case: NOT telling Trump to run. NOT having your campaign ask the media to take Trump seriously (a.k.a. the "Pied Piper" strategy). NOT sabotaging her primary opponent. NOT nominating a VP whose picture was in the dictionary next to 'milquetoast.' NOT giving highly paid speeches to banks that destroyed the global economy. Stepping foot in the Rust Belt. Supporting popular

May is out of her depth. After the Brexit vote no-one wanted the job really. They all knew it would be a disaster and were just figured that now was their one and likely only opportunity to be PM. May won by default as everyone else self-destructed, and then found herself with no plan and no idea what to do.

All she could do was repeat meaningless slogans like the infamous "Brexit means Brexit", and set up other ministers to take the fall when the inevitable happened.

Russia is under trade sanctions with the EU for invading Ukraine. Russia would also like to reassert influence over more of Eastern Europe and the EU stands in their way. Brexit is mana from heaven for their geopolitical ambitions.

Fiasco? That's the kind of attitude that hates democracy and loves autocratic governments. The British people voted for it, and if it's inconvenient, then that's just tough shit. You don't get to overturn voting because you don't agree with it. British sovereignty is more important than other goals. If the EU had made its people a priority this would never have happened. But the EU doesn't represent the people of Europe and that is not something the British people want to be a part of. We must respect their

but it was Mays own party that proposed Brexit on a gamble. After the country actually voted in favour of it, 3 separate politicians assumed responsibility for the fiasco and each stepped aside as the brakes were nowhere to be found on this train. Even Boris Johnson had a swing at the corpulent trashbag known as Brexit. the UK even went so far as to say the legislation was somehow nonbinding, and when pressed by the EU to exist in a timely fashion had the audacity to demand "a good deal" in exchange for leaving. They did not in fact get a deal.

now may's trying again, desparately, to save face and pin the blame on russia? Seriously? At some point someone has to call her bluff and ask what strategic or tactical advantage Russia gains by sabotaging a nation into exile from a trade group russia already has formal relations with (the EU)? In other words, why would russia intentionally make it more cumbersome to trade with the UK?

I'm not a fan of the conservatives... but this isn't May's doing. If May really wants to put the brakes on Brexit, we'd have a second referendum, certainly enough people and parliamentarians are calling for one. Not even the Daily Mail can continue to pretend that Brexit is popular or going well.

Russian interference isn't the cause of Brexit. Propaganda is, but the Propagandists are much closer to home.

Russiagaters are getting more and more desperately pathetic with each passing day. this pic [pics.me.me] about sums it up. Anything and everything can be and will be blamed on Russia, because we need a distraction from how horrible Hillary and her party are to lose the most winnable election in history.

Russiagaters are getting more and more desperately pathetic with each passing day....Anything and everything can be and will be blamed on Russia,

Actually, only online propaganda and hacking has been blamed on Russia. We know Russia has excellent hackers and buildings full of online propagandists, so it seems like a logical conclusion that they have been using them.

because we need a distraction from how horrible Hillary and her party are to lose the most winnable election in history.

It's 2018 and the Republicans have controlled both Congress and the Presidency for over a year, so why are you bringing up the 2016 elections? At this rate, I swear it's 2037 and one of you retards with a faded MAGA hat is going to tell me about how that Trump and Republicans won and that I should accept it. Seriously, we get it!

It's 2018 and the Republicans have controlled both Congress and the Presidency for over a year, so why are you bringing up the 2016 elections? At this rate, I swear it's 2037 and one of you retards with a faded MAGA hat is going to tell me about how that Trump and Republicans won and that I should accept it. Seriously, we get it!

Remember that the people demanding you "accept" Trump are the same ones that spent 8 years trying to defame Obama by demanding his birth certificate (even when one was provided, they wouldn't let it go).

Personally, no leader deserves automatic support. I say judge a leader by their actions... Trump has not performed well there either.

Of course, this didn't stop the left wing media claiming there was Russian involvement. Sure, if they spent £0.73 then there was Russian involvement, but the scale of involvement has been intentionally misrepresented.

In the specific case of Brexit, there are two different challenges to consider.

The first is whether or not *any* foreign government had the ability to influence the preferences of the British people when it came to the vote. I notice that much discussion is being given to the potential for Russian meddling, but I also note that nobody batted an eye when Barak Obama not only made very pro-Brexit comments, but also made it very clear that if Britain elected to vote to leave, then Britain would be put to "the back of the queue" when it came to negotiating a trade deal with the US.

Or how about the fact that the government of the day spent literally millions of pounds of Tax-Payers money to fund their part of the campaign, by physically posting their views to every single household in the country via a mail-dropped leaflet. This was clearly an attempt at influencing public opinion, and the money to do so was spent only by the "Remain" campaign, because that happened to be the position taken by the Prime Minister of the day [not even the "Government of the Day", seeing as how numerous ministers favoured leaving].

So the first issue is a pretty specious point, really. However accurate and however valid the point is, it's largely irrelevant to point to some underhand foreign government meddling in the Brexit vote when the standing UK Government of the day were tilting the odds so far the other way...

The second point concerns the foundation of democracy itself. The final Brexit vote was split 52:48 (%) in favour of leaving the EU. This vote, which was operated on 100% democratic principles [i.e. of "one person, one vote" - and not the "first pass the post" method used for UK General Elections], was a significantly stronger vote in favour of an outcome than any UK General Election in living memory. For example, when David Cameron [who was Prime Minister at the time] won his second term in office, he secured 44% of the popular vote.

44%. The Brexit vote secured 52% - an outright majority. Yet Cameron was returned to Government with a large majority... Even more curiously, nobody demanded a recount or a second General Election even though he only won 44% of the vote... [OK, cheeky argument, since the two events were handled under different rules]. But the point stands.

You only have to look at the way that political elites have reacted to the vote - one in which the British people had the temerity to vote for what they actually wanted - to see how important this vote was. Since the decision was made the EU has gone out of it's way to try and bully, cajole, frighten or threaten the UK into having a second Referendum to overturn the first decision.

Whether or not you agree with the decision to leave the EU, this external force from the EU, which is a million times worse than any influence Russia could have brought to bear, must be resisted at ALL costs. If the UK caves then there is nothing to stop the EU from becoming a totalitarian state - which might sound a bit melodramatic, but consider the significance of a state which simply sets aside democratic decisions because they are not what the elite wants.

We would do well to remember that the more we allow ourselves to be torn up by this, the better it is for Russia or any foreign state with an axe to grind.

Hilary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Election, but didn't undermine the electoral process with protest court cases. The UK should look to that example and respect the decision.

And if the UK or other countries want to make material improvements, then there is nothing to stop them from putting more effort into stamping out voting fraud, is there? Don't see much on that topic...

Barak Obama not only made very pro-Brexit comments, but also made it very clear that if Britain elected to vote to leave, then Britain would be put to "the back of the queue" when it came to negotiating a trade deal with the US.

It's rather different for POTUS to respond to questions from journalists, and for Russia to create a clandestine propaganda operation to create fake social media accounts. One is done in the open with full knowledge of who is speaking and in what context, the other is deliberately designed to mislead.

And as it happens Obama was right. Despite what Trump later said, he seems to have little interest in the UK and any possible trade deal is likely to be a low priority and extremely shitty. In fact he mentions

Whatever The media and press doesn't like from people is blamed on russians to try to revert it. Their candidate was Hillary. She lost.. It's Russians influence (even they assured the elections could not be hacked and they had to accept the results they expected ).

Now, People in Britain sees the evil that the EU is (yes I'm a part of EU and hate EU government), and they vote to exit... against the Press&media will.... again "let's blame the russians"

Thanks for that, Ivan. Always good to know what Putin's St Petersburg astroturf army is thinking

It's pretty hard to figure out what the left's astroturfing army is thinking these days. Either it's russians everywhere, including under your bed. Or it's nazi's everywhere, including under your bed. I bet psychiatrists are making a mint though.

Because of the Referendum. Though with new polling suggesting the British public turning decidedly away from a Hard Brexit, and maybe even away from Brexit entirely, there may be a change of heart among the Tory and Labour frontbenches.

Bit too late for that isn't it? The question was clear, concise, and there was enough of a voter turnout. This isn't going to be like the referendum in Canada over Quebec national sovereignty, where the question was determined to be misleading, was not clear, and was not concise thus ruled null. [wikipedia.org] If the government goes any other way then what with the public actually voted, then the government violates the social contract. In many cases, the government especially the UK government have already voided it,

You forget that the Russians and other countries control what gets on their internet. Are you suggesting that we too should have a great firewall and hundreds of thousands of government workers removing posts from the internet?

Of course not. Russia doesn't have to run MSNBC or Fox News. Americans have mostly turned on each other on their own after there was no common enemy left at the end of the Cold War (although this round of division has its origin in the 1970s in the wake of the Southern Strategy, Watergate, and the Powell Memorandum). Russia only has to nudge things a little.

You can't actually make someone cheat on their partner. You can only amplify what is already t

...to not know that Democrats not only aren't left, they're hard-core right wingers frequently more extreme than the GOP?

It all depends on the perspective of the observer. To probably the vast majority in the EU, both US political Partys are far-Right. The Democrats in the US tried to move the Overton Window too far, too fast, and the result was a backlash that got us Trump (I would have preferred Cruz or maybe Paul).

"Right" and "Left" are rather meaningless terms from the perspective of the regular citizen. One can picture it as a diagram using a pair of horizontal parallel lines resembling train tracks, with one "rail" rep

"you are stupid" is not an argument. Russia doesn't produce anything. It's main export is natural resources. It doesn't have anything to gain from reducing output level of industrial countries. Russia's main competition are other resource exporters. If you want to buy into the world view that Russia is an enemy, you buying into the game which was played when scarcity of food was determining factor in power. The 19th century is over. Russia does not gain anything by having industrial countries turn on

Britain ran an empire based on manipulating internal affairs of unsuspecting colonies.

Oh please, don't be stupid. The colonies were pretty fucking aware, what with Britain taking a direct hand in ruling them.

It still uses subtle levers of influence and plausible deniability to set people against each other all the while putting "mother england" on some sort of pedestal.

We call this diplomacy. Everybody does it, but that doesn't stop everybody from also decrying everybody else doing it.

England lives chiefly through its alliances.

England barely legally exists. I think you mean the UK, and I think you'll find the alliances, trade and military projection are intertwined and collectively establish the nation and its position in the world. Much the same as every other country out there.

BBC meddles in internal affairs of former colonies on regular basis under the guise of covering "foreign affairs"